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Wheat for Wit: malted, unmalted, flaked, or torrified?

cmbrougham

Grandmaster Brewer
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I'm going to be making my first wit soon, and I've been looking at a number of recipes and articles online. The wheat component of the recipe, traditionally, seems to favor unmalted/raw wheat, but there are a number of issues dealing with it--milling difficulties, multi-step mashes, and so on. Many recipes make the exchange for either malted wheat or flaked wheat, and I've seen some with torrified wheat.

Not having had a homebrewed wit before to compare to a commercial example, like Celis White, I'm not sure which version of wheat will give me the closest approximation to "the real thing." I'm OK with the extra work involved with unmalted wheat but if one of the other easier ingredients is close enough, I'm fine with that, too. Thanks for your input!
 
I've had good experience using malted wheat. Whatever you do, make sure to get some rice hulls. Wheat will gum up a sparge if you're not careful.
 
Cool, thanks Maine. Will definitely get some hulls. Do you typically use white or red wheat malt? I'm thinking white would make the most sense here.

I've also seen references to throwing a tablespoon or two of wheat flour into the boil, just to up the cloudiness quotient. Seems a bit extreme, to me. I'll probably brew this only three weeks before it'll be served, as I know freshness is key to this style, and I think that will minimize any amount of natural clearing that will take place.
 
I think I used white, but I'm not positive. I don't think the flour is necessary. Wheat proteins make plenty of haze on their own, and hefe yeasts are plenty hazy.

One note to remember. The last hefe I made I used a yeast specific to the style (Munich I believe?), and when I kegged it it smelled so bad I thought all was lost.  It smelled terrible.  So I gave up and waited until everything else was empty before nervously tapping it.

And it was good. Very good.
 
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